In the Mean Time
by AnxietyGrrl
Summary: A what-if bridge between Episodes III and IV. Amidst loss, duty, and partings, two people hold their shared secrets dear.


He saw the boy in Tosche Station today, sitting comfortably outside a market stall and running small gears through the sand, tracks going this way and that and over each other, while his uncle bargained for spare parts. He'd paused for a moment, as he always did, scanning around for danger. Nothing. Safe for one more day. He nodded to Owen as he passed.

Now he drank tea and tried to meditate, until in failure he emerged from the entrance to his shelter-his home-and contemplated the stars. The streak of a ship leaving the atmosphere carried his thoughts into the past, and for once, without resistance he followed them there. To the last ship he'd boarded, the last journey he may ever take.

* * *

"What is your plan now, Jedi?" The words were bitter, and her hollow eyes showed just what she thought now of any of the vaunted plans of the Jedi. Her strength had turned to hardness.

"I'm not a Jedi, Amidala. The Jedi are dead now. I'm just a man."

The infants squirmed in the hover cradle beside her. "I'm dead as well, and so are they." She reached over and smoothed a crease out of Leia's tiny forehead. Perhaps grief had not killed everything that was gentle in her. The vessel they traveled in was humble; her attire was plain, as when he'd first encountered her, but when she addressed him next, it was a queen's command. "Then you shall listen to my plan."

What had followed… he could barely think of what had followed without his emotions overtaking him, as they had begun to in those brief weeks before they separated. How many names they had used in that time, how many outposts visited, crowds blended into, how many false trails laid, under the banner of the simplest and purest of lies: _we are a young family of refugees, no different than any other, seeking_ _shelter_. Sometimes they would conceal one child; sometimes both. Sometimes she was his sister. Sometimes, he was her husband. Always, the quarters were small, the danger was close, and the four of them were together.

When they'd finally made contact with Bail Organa, they were forced to wait for a few tense days far outside Alderaan's orbit until one of his ships could get around the Imperial blockade to collect its "supplies." They hid in the shadow of an asteroid, on minimal power. She swaddled the twins and left them in the berth to sleep by each other's sides for the last time, and joined him in the small central cabin behind the cockpit. She sat beside him on the floor.

"I thought you were no longer a Jedi." There was a smile in her voice this time.

"I'm not meditating. I'm just exhausted."

"We all are. It's almost over now." There was a pang in his chest to hear it and know the truth of it.

"Where will you go?" he asked her. She hadn't shared that part of her plan. Would she accept the high status she was accorded, become Queen of Alderaan?

"I'll find a little hut in the woods somewhere," she said, and at first he laughed, but she scolded him. "I will. I'll wear a cloak, and I'll become an old woods-witch, and all the children will be afraid of me." She smiled. "Maybe. Maybe that's what I'll do."

"Maybe I will, too," he said. "Except not in the woods. Too damp." _This is the last time I'll make her laugh_ , he thought, and the guilt that usually accompanied these tender feelings for her, the panic and the shame, did not come this time. He only memorized her face in the dim glow of the emergency running lights.

"We'll look in on them from time to time," she said, and he nodded.

"Our journey is almost done."

"Yes," she said, and to his shock it was almost a sob. She reached her hand out and laid it upon his face. "A different life," she said, and he didn't know which could-have-been she was mourning.

"Padmé." He grasped her hand, closed his eyes, and kissed her palm. He did not open them again until she was embracing him, insistently easing him to the floor. _I am not a Jedi, the Jedi are all dead, I am just a man._

"Goodbye, Ben," she whispered, and the universe hummed around them.

* * *

The desert night had grown cold, and he drew his cloak closer around him. He thought about a woods-witch at the other end of the galaxy, and felt a deeper chill. With more time, more years, with more discipline, this would ease.

He rose and re-entered his shelter, shutting out the stars behind him. Safe, one more night.


End file.
